There was an enormous amount of talk about the old "Sell in May and Go Away" adage on CNBC for the past few weeks. Needless to say, anyone who followed that advice is very disappointed, as the market has simply continued on a tear upward almost without even a slight pause and certainly no correction. A pullback or correction is always possible, but so far I have lost money on the puts I have bought as insurance on my stock portfolio.  SPX closed at $1650, up $17 today and RUT ran up $12 to close at $986. RUT closed at its high for the day - very bullish behavior.

It appeared like David Tepper’s comments on CNBC this morning set the tone for today’s bullish run. Trading volume spiked up today, but barely made it to the 50 dma. Trading in the S&P 500 has not exceeded the 50 day moving average even once in May. Just under 2.4 billion shares of the S&P 500 traded today and trading volume increased 19% on the NYSE and increased 11% on NASDAQ.

Market bears have been pointing to the lower trading volume as a warning sign on this market. Traditional bull markets occur on higher than average trading volume and today's spike upward in volume matches that historical tendency. But daily volumes above the 50-day moving average in this bullish run have been relatively rare and so the average is actually declining.  When one considers how many individual investors have been spooked and have left the markets since 2008, perhaps this low volume isn’t surprising.

VIX is currently at 12.85%, a historically low level. This morning, VIX rose as the markets traded upward – an unusual divergence. This could be a result of continued high volume of puts being bought as this market hits new highs and correction concerns abound. Many institutional traders see these low levels of volatility as an opportunity to buy inexpensive insurance on their portfolios. Or it could be that the bulls are loading up on SPX calls.

The PPI will be announced tomorrow. That may raise the debate about inflation, but I doubt it will derail this market. It appears like it will require an extraordinary surprise of some kind to even give the bulls a pause.

My June iron condor position on RUT stands at a P/L of -$2,670 or -12% with delta = -$11 and theta = +$71. I closed the 820/830 put spreads today and rolled them up to 890/900. These adjustments have retained a nice potential gain for this position, assuming (big assumption) the bulls' truck slows down a bit.